2013 Recipients - Paediatric Academic Leadership Awards

Clinician Practitioner

Dr. Emmet Francoeur

The Paediatric Chairs of Canada congratulate Dr. Emmet Francoeur of McGill University and Montreal Children’s Hospital as PCC’s recipient of the 2013 Paediatric Academic Leadership - Clinician Practitioner Award. Dr Francoeur is both a general pediatrician maintaining a busy and respected office practice, and an academic with an interest in Developmental and Behavioural Pediatrics. He worked hard at the national level to get the specialty recognized and was one of the first to qualify once it became a Royal College specialty. He has been a leader in interdisciplinary care and has worked with rehabilitation specialist, neurologists and psychiatrists in both scientific endeavours and development of networks for the care of neurocognitively impaired children. He is a Coinvestigator on a CIHR grant of 1 million dollars around the treatment of ADHD. Dr Francoeur has also been a keen educator of the public, giving many talks and writing on developmental, behavioural and general pediatric issues. He is perhaps best known and has had the most national impact in his longstanding leadership in the Canadian Pediatric Society where he has been President, chair of the nominating committee and a member of their Early Childhood Development Task Force. He has mentored many young people through these activities and he received the Society’s Certificate of merit in 2010. He has since been awarded the Life Membership Award. On top of all this activity he also serves as Vice-Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at McGill and Montreal Children’s Hospital. He is seen as a pediatrician to whom peers will entrust their own children. Through all of this he has been a role model to countless trainees at all levels of education and his mentorship has been sustained over three decades.

Clinician Educator

Dr. Rayfel Schneider

The Paediatric Chairs of Canada congratulate Rayfel Schneider as PCC’s recipient of the 2013 Paediatric Academic Leadership - Clinician Educator Award. Dr. Schneider has had a consistent interest in education since 1989. He spent 9 years as director of undergraduate medical education at Toronto and by all reports had a great impact. He then took on the role of postgraduate medical education director for his specialty area, Rheumatology and helped propel that program into the premier training site for pediatric Rheumatologists in the country. In 2007 he became the Associate Chair, Medical Education for the Department at Sick Kids and has held that position ever since. He has introduced innovative programs and developed and academic group to design and study innovations in education. He is considered to have ben highly influential in raising the status of residency training in Toronto. At the national level he has been involved in promoting the national CaRMS matching process. He has mentored a number of leaders in medical education. He personally seems to have won almost all the available teaching awards at U of T and the programs that he supports are frequently recognized with awards. With his academic group he has recently begun to publish peer-reviewed articles on education, most notably on inter-professional care. His personal qualities including his thoughtfulness are often cited as reasons for his success and influence. All of this adds up to a life-time achievement of sustained support for education.

Clinician Investigator

Dr. Sylvain Chemtob

The Paediatric Chairs of Canada congratulate Dr.Sylvain Chemtob from the Universite de Montreal and L’Hopital Ste Justine as PCC’s recipient of the 2013 Paediatric Academic Leadership - Clinician Investigator Award. Dr Chemtob, who is still in the prime of his career, had 189 peer-reviewed publications at the time of submitting his CV. Many of these were in very high impact journals. In addition to running a busy laboratory for basic science studies, he is a pediatrician and neonatologist and still continues to provide clinical service. He is an internationally recognized expert in vascular biology of the premature infant. Many of his discoveries have been translated into practical applications and are having an impact at the bedside. Dr Chemtob has an innate natural curiosity and this leads to his constantly pursuing new questions. He holds 14 patents, has written 20 book chapters and has been a visiting professor in many places around the world. His achievements alone are meritorious for an award as Clinician Investigator. However, what most distinguishes Dr. Chemtob from a crowded field of talented nominees is his mentorship of students. In his brief career he has mentored 67 graduate students who have obtained Masters and PhD degrees. Many of them have gone on to be well recognized experts in their fields. This sustained creation of environments that nurture and supports young people in the fields is in large part what these awards are meant to recognize.